site.btaAssen Vassilev Does Not Insist on Being Deputy Prime Minister after Rotation

Finance Minister Assen Vassilev announced that he has never insisted on being Deputy Prime Minister. "I have never been a deputy prime minister in this cabinet, and I have no intention to be," he said in a Nova TV interview.

Vassilev added that if the National Assembly took such a decision, he would not oppose it, but he had never insisted on it, only on being finance minister.

That he would be deputy prime minister alongside Nikolay Denkov after the rotation was recently revealed by the Prime Minister himself.

On the doubts that Bulgaria will be able to join the eurozone from January 2025, he confirmed this is the current plan. He announced that no one could predict what inflation will be in the coming months, including September. However, he did not clarify whether this meant that Bulgaria would ask for an extraordinary report in the autumn to assess whether it meets the inflation criterion.

Such an option was mentioned by Prime Minister Denkov in a radio interview in mid-January. Vassilev pointed out that in 2024 incomes will grow twice as fast as inflation unlike the previous year.